As Groucho knew, it's a form of mental exercise that expands our flexibility and stamina

"I just shot an elephant in my pajamas," goes the old
Groucho Marx
joke. "How he got in my pajamas I don't know."

You've probably heard that one before, or something similar. For example, while viewing polling data for the 2008 presidential election on Comedy Central,
Stephen Colbert
deadpanned, "If I'm reading this graph correctly…I'd be very surprised."

Zingers like these aren't just good lines. They reveal something unusual about how the mind operates—and they show us how humor works. Simply put, the brain likes to jump the gun. We are always guessing where things are going, and we often get it wrong. But this isn't necessarily bad. It's why we laugh.

It turns out that humor is a form of mental exercise, and we benefit from it in the same way we benefit from a long run or a tough spin class. Scott Weems, author of "Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why" explains how humor increases mental stamina and flexibility. Photo: Getty.

Humor is a form of exercise—a way of keeping the brain engaged. Mr. Colbert's line is a fine example of this kind of mental calisthenics. If he had simply observed that polling data are hard to interpret, you would have heard crickets chirping. Instead, he misdirected his listeners, leading them to expect ponderous analysis and then bolting in the other direction to declare his own ignorance. He got a laugh as his audience's minds caught up with him and enjoyed the experience of being fooled.

We benefit from taxing our brains with the mental exercise of humor, much as we benefit from the physical exercise of a long run or a tough tennis match. Comedy extends our mental stamina and improves our mental flexibility. A 1976 study by
Avner Ziv
of Tel Aviv University found that those who listened to a comedy album before taking a creativity test performed 20% better than those who weren't exposed to the routine beforehand. In 1987, researchers at the University of Maryland found that watching comedy more than doubles our ability to solve brain teasers, like the so-called Duncker candle problem, which challenges people to attach a candle to a wall using only a book of matches and a box of thumbtacks. Research published in 1998 by psychologist
Heather Belanger
of the College of William and Mary even suggests that humor improves our ability to mentally rotate imaginary objects in our heads—a key test of spatial thinking ability.

The benefits of humor don't stop with increased intelligence and creativity. Consider the "cold pressor test," in which scientists ask subjects to submerge their hands in water cooled to just above the freezing mark.

This isn't dangerous, but it does allow researchers to measure pain tolerance—which varies, it turns out, depending on what we've been doing before dunking our hands. How long could you hold your hand in 35-degree water after watching 10 minutes of
Bill Cosby
telling jokes? The answer depends on your own pain tolerance, but I can promise that it is longer than it would be if you had instead watched a nature documentary.

Like exercise, humor helps to prepare the mind for stressful events. A study done in 2000 by Arnold Cann, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, had subjects watch 16 minutes of stand-up comedy before viewing "Faces of Death"—the notorious 1978 shock film depicting scene after scene of gruesome deaths. Those who watched the comedy routine before the grisly film reported significantly less psychological distress than those who watched a travel show instead. The degree to which humor can inoculate us from stress is quite amazing (though perhaps not as amazing as the fact that Dr. Cann got his experiment approved by his university's ethical review board).

This doesn't mean that every sort of humor is helpful. Taking a dark, sardonic attitude toward life can be unhealthy, especially when it relies on constant self-punishment. (Rodney Dangerfield: "My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.") According to
Nicholas Kuiper
of the University of Western Ontario, people who resort to this kind of humor experience higher rates of depression than their peers, along with higher anxiety and lower self-esteem. Enjoying a good laugh is healthy, so long as you yourself aren't always the target.

Having an active sense of humor helps us to get more from life, both cognitively and emotionally. It allows us to exercise our brains regularly, looking for unexpected and pleasing connections even in the face of difficulties or hardship. The physicist
Richard Feynman
called this "the kick of the discovery," claiming that the greatest joy of his life wasn't winning the Nobel Prize—it was the pleasure of discovering new things.

By providing this sort of kick, humor lets our brains regularly experience the delight of discovery even if we aren't scientists—which is fortunate, because most of are about as likely to get a doctorate in physics as we are to write for "The Colbert Report."

—Dr. Weems is a researcher at the University of Maryland and the author of "Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why," published by Basic Books.

Jeez, the least he could do is get the opening joke right. Groucho, as Captain Spaulding in Animal Crackers uttered the following during his monologue:

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know. Then we tried to remove the tusks. The tusks. That's not so easy to say. Tusks. You try it some time. As I say, we tried to remove the tusks. But they were embedded so firmly we couldn't budge them. Of course, in Alabama the Tuscaloosa, but that is entirely ir-elephant to what I was talking about."

The article held my interest until near the end. While it may be true that dark, sardonic humor is not healthy for the one creating it, I find that Rodney Dangerfield's self-deprecation and delivery made him the funniest comedian ever. But in this article, as in his routines, Mr. Dangerfield got no respect.

Aristotle tells us that humor results when we can feel superior to someone or something, so long as it does not involve injury. Example: if some high toned old Christian woman slips on her fanny, that may be cause for humor. If she breaks that fanny, it isn't funny anymore.

RAISON D'ETRE: I've apparently been on this like multi-decades savant-of-wisdom (spiced with humor) roll. But I don't know how the world really works, or am kind of willfully blind to it. That's because I was raised in a wealthy [Texas] family to be a 'palace poodle'. That is to play golf at Brook hollow [Dallas], Pebble Beach, etc., ski in Aspen (we owned a 1000 acre ranch there). The family [mostly r/e development] business was H/Q'd in an office building we owned outright, along with corporate-aircraft, majority ownership in professional sports team (now d/b/a the San Antonio Spurs), etc. So again, no, I wasn't rewarded for making smart moves, or for being highly-educated. Instead the incentives were for me to in effect be narcissistic. That is to father grandchildren, and be able to contribute to the conversation at like a fancy dinner party, or pretending to pay attention in like board meetings, etc. {sigh} Not a bad gig, right? Friends I grew up with are living that life today, often married (by-the-way) to daughters of powerful and/or well-connected family's. To my (everyone's, really) amazement I did this work, plus a lot more; Arguably, historically significant, right? But (like Letterman once commented) sadly "there ain't no money in it". That's because basically I'm an on-the-street orphan. Meaning, my father died of cancer before the age of 50, leading to the business being liquidated (with a substantial portion of the proceeds going to charities) And today according to my older brother, who works as Morgan Stanley, if the family business was still a going concern (i.e., run by my father) it'd be worth approx. $500 million. And in turn (thanks to my grandfather) I owned a minority [8%] of the stock. {sigh} This is all (like they say in Texas) a long-winded way of my making an apology to Supreme Court Justice Kagan; Here some months back in the WSJ Comments Section I wrote (out of reckless ignorance) a dismissive and/or disparaging remark directed at the President's appointee to U.S. the Supreme Court. And as it turns out, this weekend (my of course being unemployed and/or unemployable and thus having the time) I saw on C-SPAN an interesting interview where Associate Justice Kagan answered questions, speaking (engagingly, as they say) about herself and some about how the court works. And not that it matters, right? But I was won over; And so for the record withdraw with apologies my disparaging remark.

During a blood drive at my company, a Bill Cosby video was shown on a big screen. Everyone was laughing out loud, including the nurses who were jabbing the donors while guffawing. That scene in itself was funny.

I like a good laugh as much as the next guy, who always seems to have better material, but isn't most laughter actually not in response to what we would call humorous comments? Rather, my understanding is that a large share of laughter is instinctual and a form of bonding behavior.

Rodney Dangerfield was the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. His comedy was the equivalent of a great blues artist - and for the same reasons.On the other hand, sardonic attacks on others - disguised as "comedy" - is the lowest of the low. The worst kind of passive-aggression.

An elderly Jewish man sat down in the confessional of the Catholic church."What brings you here today, friend?" asked the priest, somewhat surprised to see a Jew in his confessional."After seventy years as a virgin, I made love all night long to two twenty year-olds.""I understand," replied the priest, "and you tell me this because you seek absolution, even though you are a Jew?""Not at all," replied the old man. "I'm telling everyone!"

Humor is also a good way to reset from a frustrating experience. When an absurd event causes a setback I find it helps me to laugh about just how ridiculous it is before I set about solving the problem.

Seems like typical pop science to me. Rodney's line "My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met." is bad because the humor is self-directed. Yet Colbert making fun of his intelligence with "If I'm reading this graph correctly…I'd be very surprised." is good?

building on that - consciousness generally is a continual process of forecasting what's next. Dreams occur when sensory input to keep the modeling process from diverging is shut down. Memory records the events that most influence the forecasting process and false memories which are shockingly common occur when the forecasting falsely interprets an event as affirming the (incorrect) forecast. Any other enduring mysteries I can explain today?

So true Robert... and I believe that this explains why so many Liberals do NOT have a good sense of humor. They've never learned how to "solve problems" simply because they take themselves too seriously.

The problem with him using Dangerfield to make his point is that Rodney Dangerfield was a CHARACTER created by Jacob Cohan (yes, that was his real name) and the humor he used was just schtick to create a comic identity. He "self-directed" his self-deprecating humor at his character, not himself. (He actually came up with the name and style after getting advice from Jack Benny.)

I'm with you on this one, Bill. The humor was classic redirection. It wasn't (necessarily) classic Rodney Dangerfield "Can't get not respect."

There's also an association vs. causality thing going on here. This type of humor is a wonderful escape from life's depressing situations - in this case a bad marriage. It doesn't mean that the state of mind causes depression.

Pop science? No... bad science. We scientists know not to confuse the moon with the finger pointing at it.

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